Owari no Seraph is a really pretty anime with great
character design that’s based on a manga.
So far it’s also fairly predictable, plot-wise. Despite that, I watched the first season and
will pick it back up when they bring out the next season. And not just because I’m something of a
vampire fan.
The premise here is that a human-created virus got loose and
catastrophically decimated all of the human population over 13 years old. Vampires have taken over much of the world
and keep human children “safe”, using them as food in return for their “protection”. The story centers around two of those human
children, Yuuichirou (Yu) and Mikaela (Mika).
With several other children they
consider “family”, these two boys attempt to escape the vampires. All of
them but Yu are killed by one specific vampire.
Mika sacrifices himself so that Yu can escape. Yu does escape and discovers that humans are
still around and are fighting the vampires for control of the world. Yu vows to destroy all vampires who held and
then destroyed his “family”.
Most of the first season is Yuuichirou learning to fight and
learning to get along with other humans.
The other main characters are introduced, including the captain of the
Moon Demon Company, Guren. Yu’s
classmates and fellow vampire fighters are also introduced, including the girl
who helps Yu cope among the humans, Shinoa.
Yu-tachi aspire to fight as
members of the Moon Demon Company, and train toward that goal. They learn to work together and all of them gain
demon-weapons during training. These are
weapons powered by demons, that must be controlled be the wielder.
It turns out that during this time that Yu has been growing
up, so has Mika. Mika wasn’t killed, but
was turned into a vampire by the vampire Queen and has become her aid. Despite his human beginnings, Mika has sided
with the vampires. This has got to be a
plot device because it’s hard to imagine him siding with the vampires who
killed his “family”, but he also blames the humans for the original destruction
of everyone’s way of life and seems to believe that the vampires are better
equipped to rule the world. So of
course, Yu and Mika care for each other, and are on opposite sides of the
conflict. 
They discover this fact during a raid/battle between the
human and vampire forces. They find out
that each other is alive when Yu stabs Mika, and then both try to “save” the
other. During the battle, as Yu’s
friends are out-numbered and getting beat, he loses control and becomes a
monster and begins killing everyone/everything around him. It turns out Yu is himself a weapon of sorts,
with demon-based powers even his own demon weapon is afraid of. Both humans and vampires retreat from his monster
presence. Guren tells Shinoa that she
can stop Yu from his rampage, and she does manage to bring him back to himself. The
first season ends with a break as Yu recovers and apologizes to his friends for
his loss of control.
